Governance - the way decisions are made, power is distributed, and risks are held - is a key part of the land system. We find ourselves having conversations about governance in almost all of our work, whether that’s thinking about formal legal structures for new organisations, or thinking about how groups of people work together to get things done. 

We were really pleased to be part of this project in 2021, alongside brap, School of System Change, Transition Network, and Lankelly Chase, who also funded the work. Together we wanted to learn more about the conditions for governance to be truly transformative rather than reinforcing existing systems of oppression or domination. We used a small grant from Lankelly Chase to spend time developing a proposal for a well-resourced set of facilitated learning spaces for those exploring the edges of governance in the UK. 

A key part of this process was paying deep attention to the ways in which projects and collaborations begin, and the governance of this process itself. We spent a lot of time establishing ways of working and collaborative budgeting processes which supported us to then move quickly at key moments, both when organising events to support the design of our proposals, and then when writing up the proposals. You can read more about how this project developed and the proposals for the next stage here.

The project has achieved funding for the next stage of its development and you can find out more by checking out the project’s Notion pages.